Angst, Flowers of St. Francis, The Newton Boys, School of Rock, Blackout in Rome

I think Angst (or Fear) is my least favorite of the Rossellini films with Bergman. The structure of the narrative is pretty simple: Bergman's character is cheating on her husband and won't come clean about it, and so is forced to payoff her lover's ex-girlfriend to keep the affair quiet. The twist, which I saw coming, is that the husband already knows about the affair, and is paying the girl to agonize his wife, so that she will confess. For a relatively short film, it seemed to go on and on, and I just couldn't get myself to care about either of the characters. She's unfaithful, he likes to cause her agony, and I guess the moral ambiguity of the situation could be interesting, but it wasn't. On the MoMA website, it said this, "the film was made because Rossellini was interested in the idea of Germany’s reconstruction (both material and moral) ten years after Germany Year Zero". There's probably a whole layer of social commentary or something that I'm missing. I think simple stories can be amazing, but I think I just didn't get this one.

I love Flowers of St. Francis, and it's a great example of how well simple stories can work. I like that the title also translates as "Francis God's Jester". This film really impressed me, because I think that as Rossellini obviously grew up in and was living in a strong Catholic country, there would be a lot of pressure to glorify the saints, and this film could have turned out very badly. He made Francis look a little less than humble, like when he would command people to follow his own rules. The character of Francis wasn't portrayed as a simple, devoted man, but seemed a little bit more intelligent or complicated than the men around him. I love the scene with Francis's friend (I can't remember his name) and the leader of the barbarian tribe, where the monk just looks at him and doesn't have to say anything.

The Newton Boys didn't feel like a typical Hollywood movie, but it didn't feel like a Richard Linklater film either. I like the way the film was directed, I liked the casting and the story, but I left the film feeling like it was only mediocre. I felt like the movie was trying to be made patable to a wider audience, and so some of the quirkier aspects of Linklater's style were left out. My inclination is to blame the studio system and believe that the final film was not Linklater's vision. However, in interviews with him I've read, he said he was happy with The Newton Boys and he was pretty much left alone by the studio when making it. I've been thinking about why this and School of Rock don't feel like Linklater films, or as Aaron put it, they seem like they could have been directed by anyone. I definitely don't agree with that, but I'm not sure why Linklater's personality does not come out in them more, even though he says that there is no difference in the way he approaches directing something like Bad News Bears and something like Before Sunrise. It could be because The Newton Boys is a western and a bigger budget film, so it's obviously going to be different from his other work. Maybe it just doesn't feel like Linklater unless there's someone going off about something (whether a conspiracy theory or an article by a biochemist) and there's not very much action in the plot.

I don't think School of Rock could have been directed by anyone else and have been as successful as it was, but the first time I saw it, I didn't even know it was directed by Richard Linklater. Like Dazed and Confused, this film feels like a celebration, and there are no negative consequences. I think the movie is sweet, without being sappy, and Jack Black is great at working with kids. Joan Cusack is also amazing in this, and brings a good balance to her character. The principal is anal but not heartless, awkward but endearing, and ultimately a sympathetic character, but not just because we feel sorry for her. Jack Black is able to convince us (or at least me) that even this uptight principal is cool. This film does well what so many other teacher-inspires-students films do so badly (and so help me god, I've had to sit through Stand and Deliver in so many math classes in my life).

Finally, Blackout in Rome. I think it's funny we watched this (I'm pretty sure) on the day after there was a big ice storm in my hometown and almost everyone lost electricity for several days (Blackout in Manhattan, KS). Anyways, I liked that the film starts off with a narration saying that the Italian people are such kind, generous people, who hide soldiers even though they could lose their lives for it. The narration pretends to be an objection observation of what's happening, but then turns out to be satirical, given what follows. Three women dress up as nuns, I'm guessing because it helps them bargain for cheaper prices, and end up getting a good bargain on a bunch of food in return for taking some hidden soldiers off the hands of this family. As soon as the one woman realizes that there could be serious consequences for housing the soldiers, she immediately wants to get rid of them. I'm surprised this film was never widely released in the US, because I would think there would be some interest in it in the US.